Paper Mario: Double-Sided
}} Paper Mario: Double-Sided is a role-playing game released for the Nintendo Switch, and the sixth game in the Paper Mario series. It returns to the side-scrolling gameplay seen in Super Paper Mario, but adds elements from the first two games. Overarching Story Shared Prologue: The Barrier Cave Mario receives a letter from Princess Peach, who tells him to meet her at the Barrier Cave, a mysterious cave located near her castle. Mario makes his way there, and meets Peach at the cave. She informs Mario of strange tremors coming from the cave, but as they head deeper inside, Bowser ambushes them. As usual, he attempts to kidnap Peach, but is promptly defeated. Once Bowser is defeated however, he falls back towards a strange crystalline mirror of sorts, which shatters and unleashes a blinding light towards the trio. When the light fades, the trio witness a vortex of sorts with two eyes emerging from it. A giant smile then emerges as two hands grab Mario and Bowser, before the portal closes. Peach is in shock, but then looks outside the cave to see various portals opening up throughout the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario's Story Prologue: We Have to Talk About Parallel Universes Mario wakes up in the middle of a street, with a strange blue and purple sky above him. As he walks through the street, a green-robed Shy Guy runs up to him, taking multiple glances at the red-hatted plumber. She then hops up and down before screaming chants of "I found him!". She then sprints off towards a small lab as Mario follows. When Mario arrives, the Shy Guy can be seen talking with a glasses-wearing Scuttlebug, who then looks at Mario with an expression of shock. He identifies himself as Dr. Poindexter Aprus V, and the Shy Guy as Shytoo, a colleague of his. Shytoo tells Mario that Poindexter had detected interdimensional energies radiating from his body, and sought to see if he had anything to do with the random portals opening up in town. When Mario seems confused about his whereabouts, Poindexter tells him that he's in a town known as Spatior, the so-called "world between worlds". Various individuals from various realities end up here, and find a home for themselves. Poindexter and Shytoo simply decided to work together to analyze the reason for why this happens. Shytoo and Mario eventually agree to team up to investigate the happenings with the dimensional portals. As they head outside town, a portal opens up and pours out a horde of Goombas. The duo take out the Goombas, before noticing that the portal is still open. They jump inside to see what's going on. Bowser's Story Prologue: Striking a Deal Bowser is thrust out of a portal outside a city, landing on top of a blue-spotted Toad with glasses on. The Toad screams in agony as Bowser angrily asks him where he is. The Toad says he's outside a town known as Spatior, and that he had just been thrust into this strange area as well. Despite being squashed by Bowser, the Toad teams up with him, identifying himself as Mys. T. The duo rampage through the fields outside Spatior, taking out the Goombas that had recently shown up. When Bowser and Mys. T arrive in Spatior, most of the townspeople flee, save for the Scuttlebug known as Dr. Poindexter Aprus V. He escorts the duo to his lab, clearly fascinated by the fact that multiple individuals have come from the portals. When he tells Bowser that he had met a red-hatted plumber, Bowser furiously demands to know where he went. Poindexter said he has no clue, which prompts Bowser and Mys. T to rampage away from the town, and eventually enter the first portal they find. Intermissions Uniquely, each character sees the same intermissions. However, it depends on who clears the chapter first. For example, if Chapter 1 is cleared with Mario, you'll see Peach's intermission, and then clearing Chapter 1 as Bowser will show Luigi's intermission. Peach's Intermissions Coming soon... Luigi's Intermissions Coming soon... Controls Gameplay Paper Mario: Double-Sided is the first real-time RPG in the history of the Mario series. While it retains the sidescrolling aspect of Super Paper Mario, it's less focused on platforming and moreso on combat and exploration. You'll have a partner constantly following you, who you can command to help out with various functions in and out of battle. Both Mario and Bowser are fully playable, each with their own stories that contain four chapters and a prologue chapter. Once both of their stories are beaten, a final chapter opens up. Changes from past Paper Mario games While Double-Sided returns to Super Paper Mario's formula, with some of the concepts from the original Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door sprinkled throughout, there are still some notable changes. *Leveling up is now done in a similar fashion to the Mario & Luigi games, where each stat gets an increase, plus you can choose one stat to boost. The stats in particular are: **HP **FP **BP **Power **Luck ***Influences your odds of getting a critical hit. **Every stat but BP gains five points every level, with BP gaining one point per level. *HP and FP now regenerate automatically, though they'll regenerate much slower while in battle. Certain badges can remedy this however, plus you can always use HP/FP-restoring items. *Badges that add new attacks to your arsenal now have cooldowns when used in a battle. *A targeting system now exists, which helps you "aim" at certain enemies when jumping on them and hammering/breathing fire at them, and also determines who your partner will be attacking. *The Audience now functions as a mix of the systems seen in The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario: **The maximum capacity of the audience now grows by one for every enemy you defeat, though bosses will add five new audience members when first defeated. **The audience now increases Star Points instead of regular points. *You can buy bigger bags as you progress through the game. *Star Pieces can now be tracked instead of having to get hints from NPCs, using an item obtained later on in the game. Partners Coming soon... Items & Badges Items Badges Enemies Bosses Coming soon... Development Paper Mario: Double-Sided started development as a simple prototype of a real-time Mario RPG. Yet, when the parallels to Super Paper Mario were noticed, Ghostrealm Studios’s teams worked to translate it into a proper Paper Mario game. Plot and Atmosphere The first decision to be made was making the game a spiritual successor to the first three Paper Mario games, particularily Super Paper Mario. The initial plot simply had Mario and Bowser fighting off an alternate counterpart of Mario, but this was changed because it was dull in a sense. Instead, the focus was shifted to that of a journey across parallel universes, in a similar vein to Super Paper Mario. Core Gameplay The core gameplay was planned to resemble Super Paper Mario from the beginning. That being said, the developers wanted to bring in elements of the Thousand-Year Door and the original Paper Mario. This included partners, as well as badges. Badges especially were given a core focus. The idea was to turn them into the "abilities" you'd normally use in an RPG, as well as fix a major issue with Super Paper Mario: the need to scroll through menus to use items. Instead, they could be bound to buttons. Trivia *This is the first Mario RPG to have Bowser as a playable character and not the main antagonist since Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story in 2009, not counting remakes. *The subtitle of "Double-Sided" references the idea of there being two main characters that are fully playable, each with their own motivations. *The idea of crossing between universes was inspired by the Pokemon series's Ultra Beasts. Category:Paper Mario (series) Category:Role-Playing Games Category:Ghostrealm Games Category:Nintendo Switch Games Category:Fan Games Category:Mario (series) Category:Mario Games